Critical Reflection

12 weeks ago, I made my first blog post. Looking back, I can safely say that I have successfully met the goals I had set for myself at the start of the effective communication course. Under Brad’s guidance, I became more comfortable and confident in my speech and presentations. One major takeaway that I learnt was how to accurately summarize different types of articles. During the course I also learnt many presentation techniques such as elevator pitches and how to deliver an effective presentation to a group of people. All those weeks of lessons and practices helped me immensely during the preparation for the final presentation and the writing of the report.

Overall, this course has taught me the importance of being able to communicate efficiently. Before this course, I did not believe in voicing my opinions and ideas partly due to my introverted nature. However, I now firmly believe that effective communication is a soft skill which everyone should learn as it will not only help in our university studies, but will also aid us when we enter the workforce. I believe I am still far from achieving sufficient communication and writing skills and I hope to continue to learning even after the completion of this course.

In all honesty I originally felt that the group project was a huge waste of time. Communication was extremely tough in the beginning due to the fact that we were not familiar with each other at the time. We also could not decide on what we wanted to do for the project which severely impeded our ability to do many of the assignments that we had to complete. Thankfully, after many weeks of discussion, we finally decided to settle on our SmartRide project. Through the course of preparing for the presentations and the report, I was able to apply the many skills I learnt in the effective communication lessons which definitely helped to speed up the overall completion of everything. Although our project idea might not have been the best, I definitely know that we did our best and that the overall outcome was surprisingly positive. The struggles I faced and the lessons I learnt have definitely made a positive impact in my life and now that the project has come to an end, I can confidently say that this was definitely not a waste of time and I definitely had lots of fun.